Red Onion Starts

I've always bought starter sets for onions, partly because I never knew how to handle the timing of planting onion seeds for onion starts.

I planted these seeds on Feb 1. They're ready to set out into the garden on June 1: that sounds like 4 months to me.

Maybe next year, I'll start the seeds about New Years.

Basil: From Starts or From Seed?

I love good, fresh basil. So I usually try to rush the season. The first live basil available is usually from the grocery stores. Trader Joe's offer's a big pot for $3 or $4, and Fred Meyer had a hydroponically grown batch for $5.

But they don't thrive. This is part of Joe's basil (Fred's barely survived). It's grown some, but the leaves are not real healthy looking: they're wrinkled and off color.

This is basil that I planted from seed. It's very happy, and this is after I've cut some and used it.

And it doesn't need to be in a hanging basket; I might have to use that basket for something else. We'll see.

I don't usually plant basil into the herb bed until June is well under way, but these are doing well.

These are all from seed. 


Conclusion: grow your basil from seed.

An Adventure with Ladybugs

Milady saw some aphids sucking the life out of a tomatilla in the greenhouse and felt the need to Do Something.

We've always liked the idea of using nice bugs to kill icky bugs; we've tried repeatedly to hatch praying mantises in the greenhouse, with no success.

So we got ladybugs. Ladybugs love to eat aphids, so we gave them a bit of a feast.

For one day, we had ladybugs everywhere, and from their activities as soon as they were released, we may have baby ladybugs awfully soon as well.

The second day, there were a few ladybugs still around, but almost no aphids, too.

Too early to say if it worked, but it was fun!

Chips in the Garden

When we put in the raised beds a couple of years ago, we put in cedar chips between the beds, but we left the stretch between the garden and the greenhouse. It kept trying to creep into the garden, both the beds and the chips in between. So we got rid of it.

A neighbor was doing some landscaping and had rented a sod cutter. He brought it over, and made two passes for me. The grass was all dead already from the cardboard on it for the past 6 months. So it went into the compost.

So I cleaned it up, put down some landscape cloth, and brought in a yard of cedar chips and spread them around.

Peas & Tomatoes

The thought here is that the tomatoes won't need the space until the peas are pretty well done with it.

In fact, I've planted the first and last ones close enough that they can use the peas' trellis after they're done.

We'll see if this works out in the real world half as well as it does in my mind.

Purple Broccoli

I'm going to grow some purple broccoli this year. Or I think I am.

The broccoli flowers are supposed to be purple, instead of green, but then turn green when cooked.

What I've discovered so far is that they're not real strong plants. These have been in the greenhouse much longer than the normal broccoli I put out two weeks ago. It looks pretty pathetic. Let's see if it survives.

More Space by Hanging Things

There's only so much space.

There's only so much space in the garden, only so much space in the greenhouse, only so much space on the patio.

So I hang some things.

These are slicing cucumbers. I've not done these in a hanging pot before. They didn't look strong enough for putting out in the garden (but I hadn't thought about the cold frame yet).







This is the first of the hanging tomatoes this year.

I realized that a weak point is where the stalks are dangling over the side of the pots, rubbing on the top of the pot.

So I opened the drainage holes in some hanging pots, and stuck the tomatoes in those holes. We'll see how this does.

I grow some shallow-root herbs above. In this case, cilantro and sage.












This is how we do that.

These are lemon cucumbers. We do these in hanging pots every year. They do tremendously well in pots.